Fear is a strong emotion. And it’s something that a lot of horror movies and games can’t get right. As far as I’m told anyway. I’m not a horror fan, but sometimes, a piece of art comes along promising a scare or two that I just can’t ignore. A little while ago in the good old days of 2008, a game called Dead Space arrived with a thrilling, heart-racing adventure through a derelict spaceship with disfigured alien/zombies out to getcha. It rocked, and it was terrifying. And so… in the bad old days of 2014, when games were mostly broken and disappointing *cough* Destiny, a little game called Alien Isolation came out with the apparent promise of an unpredictable alien roaming a space station. They say it was golden. And I’ve just played it. Finally.

The Perfect Organism

I’ve always preferred the single player experience over the multiplayer. Always. Hey, I enjoy blasting guns on Halo as much as the next greenhorn would-be space marine, but take away the whiny kids and the kill/death ratios and deliver me a satisfying story, then I’m all ears. And Alien Isolation has just that. Its set some years after the first movie, and you play as Amanda Ripley, tasked to find a flight recorder detailing your mother’s whereabouts. You arrive at Sevastopol Station, where said flight recorder is, and discover things have gone straight to hell. Doy! With a Xenomorph onboard, you’ve got to find a ride out of there before it’s too late. Sounds simple. Is simple. Alien Isolation so far doesn’t have any annoying or ridiculous plot points or a myriad of nouns of lore to take you away from the experience. You get what you pay for here, and that’s all I’ve wanted. And trust me, the alien is terrifying. He’s completely unpredictable. He can jump out from any vent you see, stalk any corridors nearby and can pretty much just empty your bowels whenever he wants to. It’s a stressful experience.

In Alien Isolation, the alien is always a threat. You are never safe. And because he’s so unpredictable, and because the atmosphere and the sound design are top notch, he’s never not scary when he shows up. Listening to him clatter in the roof space above you is enough to make you stop, pull out the motion tracker, assess the area and find an escape route. And in all that time it takes for you to think about what to do, you may already be dead. Sometimes you can see him dribbling down a roof vent, and should you walk underneath… yeah. Inner jaw and all. The initial horror of its appearance will dampen overtime since you have to study its behavior, but it’s always scary when it’s around. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hidden beneath a bed or stretcher and he’s skulked past, his tail trailing behind him. My palms were sweaty as hell.

Bug Hunt

Both Dead Space and Alien Isolation are dripping with atmosphere, and roaming Sevastopol Station sent flickers of haunting memories of roaming The Sprawl in Dead Space 2. Except, DS2 is a scripted game, and Alien isn’t. Now, I’m not a super fan of the license. I haven’t actually seen an Alien film except the third one, and everybody says that’s rubbish. But I know enough to detect some of the hints and ticks of the scenery, to appreciate how the game brilliantly recreates the set of the movies. It’s cramped, it’s dark, lights flicker all the time and the technology is analogue, and when you activate the motion tracker the screen garbles and warps like a crappy VHS tape. It’s retro-futuristic and I love it. The hacking device you use also looks like those massive chunky original GameBoys. It’s got style in buckets, and it all helps to sell the idea that you’re walking through the movies. Its attention to detail like that I adore in video games, and something more developers need to take note of. Settings matter in any context.Alien Isolation is a wonderful experience so far, despite its frustrating moments. I’ve got three Alien books ready to read after I’m done with the game, and I may even purchase the films too and see what they’re like. Hell, I’ll bet the special effects are better than the CGI garbage we’re used to seeing now. I want more experiences like this. Scary, unnerving, and using your brain. This is as far from run-and-gun Call of Duty as you can get, and having that one hit kill threat from the Xeno is damned welcoming in this day and age of super soldier robotics. Enemies in any context should be a threat. When they’re not scary, then you’ve lost the audience. Take note. Alien Isolation knows how to do it right.

Few books out there make me feel the way Soulmates did, a book that threw no punches and got right down to business with making your heart flutter and weep. It’s without a doubt one of my favourite books, one I’ll come back to time and time again. And not only is it a wonderful story filled with great characters, dialogue and one of most original storylines I’ve ever read, but it raises questions on what love is really about, how often it’s found through serendipitous chance and what it means to find that one true relationship. Soulmates will break you, but you’ll love it.

Romance Isn't Dead

Soulmates, by Holly Bourne, is a YA novel about two students, Poppy and Noah, who discover they are real, perfect fits. Soulmates. As they date, become more intimate and start a relationship, things in the world change. Weather patterns become erratic, things get unpredictable and it becomes clear that their relationship is breaking the earth apart. And in the shadows, an agency is monitoring them, watching their every move and discovering the damage this couple could cause. I haven’t become so invested in a couple since Hazel and Gus in The Fault in Our Stars. You just long for these two to get together and live happily ever after, and you just want to keep turning pages and see how things unfold. And throughout all of this, you know they’re being watched and you flick the pages with a fear it’s all going to end. Poppy and Noah have the perfect relationship, the sort of connection I think we all desperately want. The sort of relationship when the very touch of their skin shatters your world in a million beautiful shards of glass. The sort of relationship when nothing else matters. The sort of relationship when the two of you become one, you are made immortal in those moments. That’s what Poppy and Noah have.

Soulmates had me spiraling down into sadness and soaring up into happiness all the time. Happy for them, but sad because this is a book, and relationships like these are rare planets found in the furthest reaches of the universe. I don’t know if you believe in soulmates, but I like to think that they do exist, but that comes with a fear. Say you do get a relationship, but it’s not the one. What if your soulmate is still out there searching for their own? Do you break off to search again, or stay in a great relationship? Great isn’t perfect, but it’s still a damn fine place to be. It reminds me of a picture I saw on Tumblr. Two people have blue skin, but they wear masks out of shame. They’re looking for someone with blue skin, but walk right by each other without a clue they passed their soulmate. Soulmates explores these questions, and it makes me scared shitless that soulmates do exist. Many of us have had those great relationships, but something gets in the way. And you can only do one of two things: break away to start again, or carry on and hope for the best.

The One

I never knew that Soulmates would ruin me the way it did. Books rarely make me cry, but Soulmates had my lip a-wobblin’ more than once. It brought back painful memories of those said ‘great relationships’ and how they came to end, and it also made me wonder if it’s worth giving them another try. It’s one of those books that’s impossible to put down, but you also don’t want to finish. I wanted it to go on and on, as if there were phantom pages to read after the physical ones were done. Romantic books aren’t what I read at all, not proper ‘romance’ books that have their own bookstore shelf-space. This is the sort of romance I can read. Not filled with over-the-top description about one kiss or dirty secrets made passionate behind closed doors. I’m judging, I know, but Soulmates has romance in all the right shades. Like most YA books I’ve read, relationships are handled so well, written realistically with a smidgen of impossible to make it all work. Just check out Let it Snow for three stories interlaced with romance. All of them are brilliant.Holly Bourne is an incredible writer, someone who has amazing ideas and a great sense of humour that made me smile so many times. When reading Soulmates and The Manifesto on How to Be Interesting, it didn’t feel like I was reading anyone else’s book but Holly Bourne. Just like when I read a Stephen King story, I read a Holly Bourne tale and think, yes, this is a Holly Bourne book. I implore you to read Soulmates, and yes, it’s worth the heartache, unpleasant memories and sad nostalgia. And at the end of it all, Soulmates teaches you a lesson quoted by someone I can’t remember, but it goes a little something like this: ‘don’t be said it’s over, be happy it happened.’ And that’s a goddamn good quote for life. Be happy the good shit happened.

I was pretty excited for Dying Light, another zombie game built for next-generation consoles that could hopefully break the boredom of cookie-cutter zombie games. It looked phenomenal, a world you could stop and stare at in wonder that this dilapidated disaster zone could look so beautiful, and it’s got parkour! It should have been amazing, a game that would make people return to the jaded zombie genre with enthusiasm. However, it doesn’t really accomplish that. Although I had a great time with it, it didn’t last, and ultimately, it falls in the same pit with The Walking Dead and other zombie games like Dead Rising. It gets boring way too fast.

Goodnight, Good Luck

I look for new things in zombie games, well, all games really, and the most important thing in a game for me is story and game play. And Dying Light absolutely needed a compelling story. It certainly had the potential. You play as Kyle Crane, a secret agent tasked to recover a sensitive file from a rogue agent hiding in the zombiefied streets of Harran, Turkey. And that’s… it. Other than that, you just run around doing chores for anybody asking and you never make your own choices. There was the perfect opportunity to give the player a choice, side with the government objective, or help the people survive. The choice is made up for you. I’d love to blur the line between helping both government and people, but you never do. The only choice you have is how you want to bash zombies’ heads in. The Walking Dead game gave you choices around every corner, and when you spoke to your mates about them you’d hear totally different stories. You won’t get that in Dying Light.

There is so much potential in the zombie genre, and even though it seems that we should abandon hope altogether, we shouldn’t. I’m convinced someone out there is going to bring back life to this genre, and Dying Light could have been that game. At first, it looked good. There’s a great sense of terror when playing. You’re pretty much helpless, without much skill or power and generally you’ll be running more than fighting. And there are the same kind of special zombies that come expected, like bloaters, biters, big dudes and the more misshapen ones. The Walking Dead didn’t have any of those, unless you count the bloater in the well in series two. It’s just so annoying that the story plays it so safe. There must be a better story out there somewhere to do with zombies, something that breaks the line of mediocrity and makes us care about zombies again. Or maybe that time is gone. Maybe we should bring dinosaurs back!

Farewell, We're Over

There is one game out there that does bring something new to zombies, something different, funny and interesting. Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. Or for a better description, zombies in the Wild West. It was awesome. You’d play as a cowboy searching the frontier for a cure to save his infected wife and son, and on the way you’ll find undead animals, the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, mythical creatures and people to save, and villages to secure and graveyards to cleanse all in an effort to stop the spread of the plague. Sure, the story’s not totally original, but the setting is, and that’s something different. Dying Light is pretty much everything we’ve seen before, and not to mention its cast isn’t that great either. There are only two women in the story, and one only shows up once or twice for a medical chat. The other, Jade, is your standard ‘shut-up-and-kill-zombies’ character similar to Walking Dead’s Michonne, only she doesn’t do a whole lot. It’s just lazy, and downright annoying.

Diversity is the key I think. Shake up the stories, mix up the characters and throw in new things to keep it interesting. Make us care, make us fearful of losing characters like how Game of Thrones does with every episode. Make us have faith there is a cure, and make the zombies scary. Never make the characters confident against them, and ensure there is always danger. Maybe that’s too much to ask for. I want to see that show. I’m still hopeful for a new zombie story, I just hope I’m not alone.

March was a slow reading month, sadly. Only three books, but three books that were well worth the time to read. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with people who feel they have to defend themselves and justify their slow progress with reading. Nobody ever said you should read X amount of books a week. Sure, a lot of booktubers read about ten books a month, but that’s them. That’s great, but it doesn’t really make a difference. You’re reading, isn’t that important enough? So, I read three books. Yes, not amazing progress, but its progress. And guess what? Those three books were bloody great. One in fact was one of the best I’ve ever read. And I’m going to explain why.

The Wrap Up

I started reading The Night Circus in February and I finished it in early March. It’s not a big book, but it’s packed with myth, magic and wonder that makes it feel bigger than it is. I won’t lie, it’s beautiful, but at least on my first reading I found it tricky to follow, and motivations were hard to understand I thought. The whole battle between Celia and Marco was a little shaky here and there, and if there was a deeper understanding to it, (which there probably was) I didn’t get it. It reminded me of American Gods, an equally beautiful book that’s hard to follow. If I read them both again, I’m sure I’ll like them more. But, The Night Circus stayed with me. It’s a one-of-a-kind book that I loved reading. Would recommend. Secondly I read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, one of Stephen King’s simpler tales, but still scary, creepy and engrossing. The ending was a little off, and despite its short length it did drag from time to time, but King is King. He makes it worthwhile with ace writing and imagination. Trisha McFarland has the worst journey in the woods in the world, and it heads for some dark places. Not to mention its awesome opening line: ‘The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.’

The third book I read was my most anticipated book since Tom Rob Smith’s, The Farm. Matt Haig wrote a book called Reasons to Stay Alive, and I’d put it on a reading bucket list for everyone. Not only is it somewhat autobiographical, but it’s an honest, no-holds-barred study of depression that the world so desperately needs, even more so with the Germanwings plane crash. It’s by no means going to lift stigma off mental health, but it’s a welcome start and what he’s doing most of all is getting people talking about mental health, and helping us to understand that it is a part of life. Mental health is as important as physical health, and should be treated the same. It’s hard to talk about, and I’m by no means ready to do so anytime soon, but this book is a miracle. I read it in two days and it’s something I’ll constantly come back to. Please read it. You’ll be glad you did, and it’ll teach you so many things.

April TBR

So far I’m working through A Farewell to Arms, but once I’m done I honestly don’t know what’s next. I’ve got a huge backlog to work through, and it’s actually more fun to choose on the fly than make a plan like I’d normally do. I’ve got about ten King books to read and lots of others I’ve bought late last year that need seeing to, but I will. Many others have TBRs worse than mine, and they’ll crack on with those too. But, there are still books I’ve been meaning to purchase for a while and have been either too lazy or forgetful to get them. Books like I Am Legend, and Jay McInerney’s collection to get. I’m still hungover from Bright Lights, Big City and Reasons to Stay Alive and I just want to read them again. Blast. This hasn’t been the most exciting blog post, and I apologise, but next week I’m going to jabber on about the videogame, Dying Light and why it SHOULD have reignited the zombie genre. Hey, if I talk about videogames, I always mean to do so about storytelling. Videogames can be as powerful as books. I really believe that.